I don’t speak tween

I really worry about the language skills of our future generations.  I really do.  Especially when I look at my own children,  in particular, the two tween boys.  Aged 10 and 12, they are in the early years of secondary school, heavily influenced by the world of screens and honestly, sometimes I have absolutely no idea what they are saying or why they use such strange terminology.

That makes me sound old.  I can almost hear my grandmother in my ear, saying that about the ‘young folk’ of her day.

Old or not, I still worry.

The use of text speak has become a huge influence and even though the boys have only really been using text for a year or so, it definitely influences their speech.  “Lol is not a word”, is a phrase that I seem to have on repeat.  According to my darling boys, it is.  In fact so much so, it is a word, a verb “I lolled at them so loudly in class”, is a recent example and even an adjective, “that was so lol”.  It infuriates me.  LOL is NOT a WORD.  OMG also makes regular appearances with each letter emphasised with force, as does YOLO even though I don’t actually think they know what that means.  Totes annoying.

The no longer a teen did introduce me to some interesting words such as ‘sick’ meaning good.  The boys now use this all  of the time and I am used to it now but it still does make me quietly cringe inside as for me it makes no sense.  He also introduced the boys to the word ‘bangers’ which apparently means a good tune.  This is a word that always makes my husband chuckle as his understanding of the word was quite different.  I don’t think I want to know why.

The most recent additions to our new language collection are totes “as in totally duh” (duh is yet another familiar term, often accompanied by a sigh and an eye-roll at my complete lack of knowledge about anything important) but the big one is legitimate.  Legitimate is the word of the moment or legit for short and this is a word that appears in almost every sentence that my sons say.  Everything and everyone is totally legit or totes legit if we are really lucky.

I overheard L shouting BS at the Xbox the other day and told him off as I assumed that it meant bullshit and I was not amused.  He looked at me as if I was some sort of alien and told me that it meant ball sacks and to his knowledge this was not a swear. Oh well, that’s ok then, ball sacks is a much nicer turn of phrase.

The bizarrest of them all come once again courtesy of my youngest son who really does seem to own bizarre.  He is ‘totes’ into YouTube at the moment and has a list of ‘legit’ tubers that he follows.  Suddenly, he has started saying “bru” all of the time.  It is very strange.  I have tried to ascertain why but he doesn’t seem to have an answer.  In addition to this, he says “your nan” a lot too.  Especially if he is cross with me or in a conversation with his mates.  I have seen text messages where he and his mates text each other “your nan” and “bru” repeatedly with nothing else and I’m sorry but that is just WEIRD!

Over the last couple of weeks, we have evolved to the delightful phrase “suck your nan”.  I would like to point out that my ten-year-old son is very immature and I tried telling him that it really wasn’t a nice phrase to use.  When it was used again, I responded with the comment that my nan had been dead for over 20 years, so that probably wasn’t a good idea (poor taste I know, but I thought that it might put him off using the phrase.)

I have discovered a cunning way of discouraging this new form of speaking, however, by using it myself in a faux humourous fashion.  We had a curry and I kept making comments about your nan (naan bread) and using legit in conversations.  Both boys look at me in horror like I am totally uncool but I don’t care.  If it stops them using this daft language and encouraging them to speak properly, it is legitimate.  End of.